Quick-witted, devious, and ambitious, otterlings are a mischievous race that dwells in riverfront villages. They make natural craftsmen and nimble fighters on the battlefield. Meanwhile their grandiose ambitions often lead them to unlawfulness.

Otterlings are the second race in the Adorable Creatures series, following Garden Gnomes. As natural rogues and wizards, otterlings make powerful allies, often thinking outside the box and having a plan or at least the resources to get them out of any situation. However, their unethical practices and greed can put them at odds with more lawful party members.

For my campaigns, I wanted to create a culture of people who make their living off the black market or else are known for raising rogues and wizards. Though evil, otterling settlements see the value of good business and rarely attack good-doers on sight. This allows DMs to include otterling villages in good campaigns where party members can track down an enemy on the run, find new magical items, or find information on the shadier corners of the world.

“… and now from an opening on one side came a silent writhing horror that reared up and glared on the intruder with awful luminous eyes; a serpent twenty feet long, with shimmering, iridescent scales.” —Robert E. Howard, “Black Colossus”

The days of high adventure are full of high-risk, high-reward situations. And nothing says “risky” quite like the business end of a serpent’s fang or a scorpion’s tail. Indeed, snakes and scorpions have appeared in literature throughout history as malevolent protectors—ill-willed living traps put to insidious use by keen and cruel minds. The legendary Book of Thoth was said to be guarded by snakes and scorpions. To wit, the ancient Egyptian tale of Setne Khamwas and Naneferkaptah details six miles of “serpents, scorpions, and all kinds of reptiles” surrounding the gold box housing the book. (Of course, Naneferkaptah’s curse is more deadly to Khamwas than the legion of venomous vermin, but I digress). More famously, pulp yarns like the weird fiction of Robert E. Howard and the stop-motion worlds of Ray Harryhausen have served as terrific inspiration for realizing these creatures in our own RPG campaigns.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Harryhausen’s Giant Scorpions come to life in Clash of the Titans. And it’s no secret I’m a sucker for Howard’s Hyborian Age and the serpent-slaying exploits of Conan the Barbarian. Quite often, the dangers of the natural world (albeit a primeval one) can prove as deadly to would-be heroes as those of the supernatural. You don’t necessarily need “high fantasy” to capture that sense of high adventure Howard so effortlessly engendered with his stories. But when it came to populating my Pathfinder game with a menagerie of these Stygian menaces, I found a snake-sized hole in my heart that needed filling.

Who knew that grandmother’s stories told beside the evening fire were entertaining and contained elements of elf history? Did you ever wonder why warriors from Reywald and Donnermark often favored the warhammer, traditionally a dwarven weapon? And who doesn’t trust a resident of Salzbach to taste-test the contents of an unmarked potion?

Players who create PCs native to the Grand Duchy of Dornig might find that including these traits adds some of the region’s character in their Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

But if you use another system, these traits can still be useful without the mechanical aspects. The traits can inspire D&D 5E-style boons or serve as background material for systems like FATE or Savage Worlds.

No Treasure is Safe!

Forty-Fingered Nakresh is the simian demon-god of wizards and thieves, whose eight hands grasp all there is to take. The five infamous crime lords who lead the cult of the Lowest Left Hand of Nakresh plot the most audacious and spectacular thefts imaginable to appease their god—and to outdo each other!